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my first computer

Wow, someone was talking about first computers online, and I found a link on Wikipedia to the TRS-80, my first computer. (I had a Model I)

I was sort of jealous, to be honest, of all those other folks that had Apple II’s later, but I did love that thing. Use the hell out of it too. I played Pyramid 2000 – my first experience with Zork like games, learned to program in BASIC, and went more than a little crazy with BBS when I dumpster dived and repaired a then amazing Hayes 1200 baud modems. I recall that 300 baud (which many BBS’ still used at that time) was slow enough that I could read the text as it was streaming out onto the screen.

Most of what I did, I think, was write. I wrote a hell of a lot – huge stories that are no doubt lost to time now. I wore that keyboard down to nubs, and I sure as hell became a touch typist through the process because you couldn’t read the keys when I was done. I don’t recall when we got it, but I used it right up until I went to college – when i got my first Mac (a “Fat Mac”). Let me tell you – that was a hell of a change too. Haven’t looked back from Mac’s since, even though I’ve since used damn near everything else in the marketplace at work from one time or another.

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Joe has broad software engineering development and management experience, from startups to large companies. Joe works on projects ranging from mobile to multi-cloud distributed systems, has set up and led engineering teams and processes, as well as managing and running services. Joe also contributes and collaborates with a wide variety of open source projects, and writes online at https://rhonabwy.com/.